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T O P I C R E V I E W

Delta7

Does the European Space Agency (ESA) plan on continuing having a presence in the NASA Astronaut Office?

By my count there are only three ESA astronauts currently assigned there (Nespoli, Schlegel, Vittori), and none of the 2009 selectees went through ASCAN training nor are assigned to JSC.

Being that for now NASA doesn't provide any opportunity to launch ESA astronauts, I was just curious.

Delta7

And as a follow-on question, are there plans for any international candidates to join the 2013 ASCAN class?

Michael Cassutt

No, and no. ESA doesn't need to send its astronauts to JSC for years, since they are no longer training for shuttle flights. (They do, of course, come to JSC to train on the US elements of the station.)

And since none of the ISS IPs (other than Russia) is conducting a new selection, there won't be any international astronaut candidates joining the 2013s.